When good Domain Controllers go bad!

7 August 2012 by

Scenario

It’s a pleasant day and all is well with the world. Colleagues are skipping around the office with smiles on faces…until…duh duh daaa! One by one, services start failing:

  • Printers go offline:
    • First, for Win7 users
    • Then for all clients
    • Can still print from server though
  • File shares go offline
  • Active Directory replication fails
  • DNS console will not open

Basically, your main Domain Controller (DC) has just taken a dump…and so have you!

These are the steps I took to troubleshoot the issues and get everything back online.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Microsoft Tagged With: , , , , , ,

SQL Server Maintenance Plans

3 August 2012 by

Maintenance Scripts are better

I’ve just been reviewing our Maintenance Plans (MPs). After readings a few best practice articles, it seems I’d be better off using scripts instead of MPs.

When using the Reorganise and Rebuild tasks within a MP, they will run regardless of the index fragmentation. Using scripts I could check to see if indexes actually need a little TLC, based on the level of fragmentation, eg.

  • < 5% = no reorganise/rebuild
  • 5-30% = reorganise
  • > 30% = rebuild
Filed Under: Microsoft, SQL Server Tagged With:

Configure a Failover Cluster using Server 2008 R2

2 August 2012 by

Scenario

You have already installed and configured an iSCSI SAN for your shared storage, and now you want to configure a Failover Cluster to provide increased availability to services like Exchange, SQL Server and virtualisation.

Two servers called node01 and node02 have already been joined to the domain, each with multiple Network Interface Cards (NICs).

Microsoft’s iSCSI Initiator was used to connect the volumes (LUNs) on the iSCSI SAN. One disk for Data, the other for the Witness disk.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Microsoft, Storage Tagged With: , , ,

Connect an iSCSI SAN to Server 2008 R2 using the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator

30 July 2012 by

Scenario

You’ve installed FreeNAS 8.2 and configured it as a free iSCSI SAN. Now you need to connect to the iSCSI SAN using an iSCSI Initiator.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Microsoft, Networking, Storage Tagged With: , , , ,

Configure iSCSI SAN using FreeNAS 8.2

30 July 2012 by

Scenario

You’ve installed FreeNAS 8.2 in your Home Lab, and now wish to configure iSCSI for shared storage.

Here’s how.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Storage Tagged With: , ,

Free iSCSI SAN for your home lab using FreeNAS 8.2

29 July 2012 by

Scenario

You have a home lab set up so you can experiment with the latest and greatest software and technology. You could be using VMware ESXi, Hyper-V or another hypervisor for your lab, but they don’t come with shared storage built-in. You need shared storage to set up features like Failover Clustering.

Luckily, you don’t have to spend a fortune to get an iSCSI SAN for your home lab. As the name suggests, FreeNAS is FREE!

Read on to learn how to install FreeNAS 8.2. I’ll be using VMware Workstation, but the process is similar for most hypervisors.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Storage, VMware Tagged With: , , ,

Understanding SQL Server Backups and Recovery

27 July 2012 by

I’ve read many help files/articles/posts on backup and recovery over the years, but I’ve recently read some of the best yet that have filled in some gaps when it comes to SQL Server:

Filed Under: Microsoft, SQL Server Tagged With: ,

Free Microsoft training

25 July 2012 by

Using the Microsoft Virtual Academy has been on my TODO list for some time, but for the next two months everyone has free access to the Hands-On Labs from TechEd 2012.
Check them both out now:

Filed Under: Microsoft Tagged With: ,

SQL Server Service Pack version query

24 July 2012 by

I was just checking the Service Pack versions on our SQL servers. Here’s the query I used:

SELECT
SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') AS Edition,
SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel') AS ProductLevel,
SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion') AS ProductVersion

The Community Technology Preview (CTP) of SP2 for SQL Server 2008 is already out, so it shouldn’t be too long for general release, so in the meantime we’re up-to-date using SP1 🙂

SQL Server 2005 is at its latest Service Pack on version 4:

Standard Edition (64-bit) – SP4 – 9.00.5057.00

Filed Under: Microsoft, SQL Server Tagged With:

Hardcore troubleshooting using Logs, Process Monitor, PowerShell and Excel

24 July 2012 by

I’m a huge fan of the Sysinternals Suite – Process Monitor being one of my faves – and am loving using PowerShell to do ever more, but this post is at another level: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2012/06/01/what-s-causing-that-dfsr-change-storm.aspx

Hopefully I’ll be able to use similar techniques for those really tricky problems that rear their ugly head from time to time. Bring it on!

Filed Under: Microsoft, Programming Tagged With: , , , ,
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